(Image Credit: AFP via Getty Images)
Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans filed a federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, accusing him and his department of failing to implement a law that prohibits the US from sending military aid to foreign security forces committing gross violations of human rights.
“This lawsuit demands one thing and one thing only: for the State Department to obey the law requiring a ban on assistance to abusive Israeli security forces," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said, referring to the Leahy Law. DAWN is helping support the lawsuit.
"For too long, the State Department has acted as if there’s an ‘Israel exemption' from the Leahy Law, despite the fact that Congress required it to apply the law to every country in the world. As a result, millions of Palestinians have suffered unimaginable, horrific abuses by Israeli forces using U.S. weapons,” Whitson added.
Plaintiffs include a math teacher in Gaza, identified in the lawsuit with the pseudonym Amal, who has been forcibly displaced seven times since October 2023. Twenty of her family members were killed by US-backed indiscriminate Israeli attacks.
Amal joins four other Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans in suing the US through the Administrative Procedure Act, for failing to implement the Leahy Law.
